POSTMODERN PREACHING rediscovers direct engagement between scriptures and tradition with the whole human experience. There are no restrictions to overcome, as presented by Modernity. Rather, human concerns and questions are recognized and addressed in texts that know the human condition thoroughly, yet also bear witness to the power of the sacred. The preacher hosts a "sacred conversation" between all past texts and each occasion they are read and interpreted publicly.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Proper 3 (Year A)

Isaiah offers two responses in a time of testing or even crisis: God has abandoned me/us or God will act again, as in the past, therefore stay busy with the daily, routine acts of comfort and justice.

The psalmist personally expresses the necessity to sometimes wait for the Lord. Sometimes faith is not bold nor dramatic, just routine.

Paul reminds these early Christians in Corinth of their identity: "servants of God" and "stewards of the mysteries of God." He then appeals to them to fulfill this status not judging how other Christians might interpret this same status or even judging themselves too closely. Judging can distract from action to fulfill your God-given status. Leave the judging to God. Then yours, and everybodyelse's results will be judged accordingly.

In this excerpt from Matthew's version, Jesus raises the question of priorities. What is the driving force in one's life? Does it overwhelm other necessities, including doing God's work in the world? And the corollary: What is the leading cause of anxiety in one's life? Does it overwhelm one's capacity to live one day at a time?

Coming at or near the beginning of Ordinary Time or the "teaching season" of the church's calendar, these readings provide a timely transition from the great, broad foundational claims of the faith to daily implications. After all the fundamental claims made about the birth, life, death, resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit, the question could emerge: Now what?

Michel deCerteau, (1925-1986) the Jesuit priest who engaged his secular postmodern contemporaries, asserts that "belief" is not a matter of one's consenting to dogma but a personal wager or an "investment." He writes: "...I define 'belief' not as the object of believing (a dogma, a program, etc.) but as the subject of one's investment in a proposition, the act of saying it and considering it as 'true'..." ( The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 178) He then moves to a related observation about contemporary life: "There are now too many things to believe and not enough credibility to go around. ( p. 179)

The actuality is that we choose what we believe and that choice influences all the other choices we make in life. Today there are many choices that seem urgent, plausible and worthwhile. So, choose carefully. And it's not a one-time decision nor are we consistent. The fundamental choice is actually re-enforced or undercut by all the smaller, daily choices we make. Over a lifetime, that choice becomes stonger or fades. Paul urges action. He prefers action over constant second-guessing of others and ourselves, especially when it might serve as an excuse for not living out our status as "stewards of the mysteries of God." Rather than spending precious time fretting over conceptual orthodoxy, just get busy with what we already know and all should agree are the basic, easy to understand and routine necessities of faith-- some specific acts of comfort and justice done by you in the next twenty-four hours of your life!

Annalena Altarpiece, Convent of San Marco, Florence

Fra Giovanni da Fiesole ("Angelico") c.1400-1455

"Sacra Conversazione"

Fra. Angelico, a member of the preaching order of the Dominicans, is credited with introducing into the Western imagination the conceit of "sacra conversazione." Saints from the Bible, the past and the near-past are shown together in animated convrsation around the Madonna and Christ Child. In the "Angelina Altarpiece" in the Convent of San Marco in Florence, he depicts St. Peter Martyr a dynamic preacher ranked with Dominic himself and martyred in 1251, Saints Comas and Damian twins known for their gifts of healing and martyred in 303, St. John the Evangelist, St. Lawrence martyred in the persecutions of the Emperor Valerian in 258 and St. Francis of Assisi. Holding their texts for ready reference, they speak, listen and respond to each other in a timeless conversation initiated by the scriptures.

"Other voices are at once the past and future of my own voice. The past because they have always already called me and even named me, they have already addressed themselves to me, and through their immemorial past, immemorial as far as I am concerned since they preceded the I, they have always already gathered lights, no matter how obscure, in the place that becomes, little by little, my place. Future of my voice also, since it is only through them that I can learn to speak and to say something"

Jean-Luis Chretien, The Call and the Response, (p.81)--------------------------------------------------------------------------"You may say something new and yet it must all be old. In fact you must confine yourself to saying old things-- and all the same it must be something new! Different interpretations must correspond to different applications. A poet too has constantly to ask himself: 'but is what I am writing really true?' -- and does this necessarily mean: 'is this how it happens in reality?' Yes, you have to assemble bits of old material. But into a building."

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, (p. 40e)--------------------------------------------------------------------------"...'[D]econstruction' has this peculiarity: if we look back at its origin in the text of [Heidegger's] Being and Time, it is the last state of the tradition-- its last state of retransmission, to us and by us, of the whole tradition in order to bring it back into play in its totality. To put the tradition into play according to deonstruction, according to Destruktion, (a term Heidegger was determined to protect against Zerstorung, i.e. against 'destruction,' and that he characterized as Abbau, 'taking apart') means neither to destroy in order to form anew nor to perpetuate-- two hypotheses that would imply a system given as such and untouchable as such. To deconstruct means to take apart, to dissemble, to losen the assembled structure in order to give it some play to the possibility from which it emerged but which, qua structure, it hides."